Apr 24 2008
Tips for Energy Efficiency and Environmentally Friendly Living
Energy efficiency is a topic that should be unanimously agreed upon to be a good thing. Left-leaners should like it because it helps save the environment. And right-leaners who don’t care about the environment should like it because it will save them money. This post will offer suggestions that will be friendly to the environment, and save you money.
Air Conditioner Efficiency
A cheap way to reduce energy consumption is to check your air filters in your air conditioning units. When dust collects on the air filter, it reduces the air flow into the air conditioner, which means that it needs to work longer to produce the same amount of cooled air. Running the air conditioning unit longer means reduced energy efficiency; wasting your hard-earned money. A dusty air filter can reduce efficiency by 5-15%.
You can reduce the amount of time that you need to run the air conditioner by increasing the temperature on the thermostat and using a ceiling fan. The fan will mix up the air in the room, making it feel cooler to the skin.
Window Efficiency
If you live in a cold climate, you can use your windows to heat your home during the day. Simply open the curtains during the day to let the sunshine in, and it will heat your home. Also, make sure that the window is tight-fitting to the frame. If you feel a draft, that means that the window is loosing heat to the outside - reducing your energy efficiency and losing you money.
If you live in a hot climate, use white window shades during the day to reflect the sunlight so that it doesn’t warm your home. You can also apply a semi-reflective coating that will further reduce the amount of light that enters through the window. For every bit of sunlight that is reflected away by the film and shades, that is less time the air conditioner needs to be running.
Appliance Efficiency
One of the worst appliances for energy efficiency is the clothes dryer. It is extremely convenient to take your clothes out of the washer, put them in the dryer and come back an hour later to fold and put them away. Out of all the energy uses in a home, the clothes dryer user 3%! How often do you use a clothes dryer? Compare that to your refrigerator that is on 24 hours per day, which uses only 8%.
The primary function of a clothes dryer is to waste energy. That’s how it’s designed! It takes energy, that you pay for, and intentionally converts it to heat. The heat energy gets absorbed by the wet clothes, which evaporates the water in them. A much more energy efficient method of drying your clothes is to invest in a clothes line. You’ll save 3% of your yearly energy bill just from hang drying your clothes.
Another appliance that everyone can live without is the dishwasher. I’ve never understood their purpose. Almost 100% of the energy used by the dishwasher can be saved by washing them by hand. Unless you always want to eat on dirty dishes, you’ll eventually need to wash them with hot water and dish soap. So some energy will be used washing dishes. But instead of paying for the energy to have the dishwasher do it, you’ll be using your own energy.
Energy Efficient Conclusions
Saving energy is something that can save all of us money. A positive side effect is that it is environmentally friendly. By not using the dishwasher and clothes dryer will save both energy and money when combined over the entire year. Using your air conditioner and windows efficiently will further allow you to maintain your current level of comfort, while at the same time being more energy efficient.
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10 Responses to “Tips for Energy Efficiency and Environmentally Friendly Living”
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Atmoz, lots of us right leaners were conservationist a long ways back. Most of us identify with Teddy R. FWIW.
Agreed Steven; it’s my trendy lefty (that’s liberal in US speak) friends who are the conspicuous consumers. They get around in monster four wheel drive cars, live in large air-conditioned houses, use electric clothes dryers, and holiday frequently overseas. Public transport? Not on your life. So-called green energy? Forget it. Their view of the environment is always one that calls for the Government to be doing something (preferably symbolic) - never a thought for making any adjustment to their own lives. My habit of pointing out the fundamental disconnect between their rhetoric and behaviour is never welcome!
It’s annoying to them that while I’m the conservative John Howard fan and confirmed AGW skeptic, it’s our family that has always operated a fuel efficient four cylinder car; used a solar hot water system; hung our clothing to dry in the sun; and it’s me that harps on about tackling real world problems such as malaria, AIDS and other communicable diseases, and providing clean drinking water to millions that don’t have it.
Getting to be like the restroom question (How many, and how labeled?).
leftys that care about the environment but not their money, righties that care about their money but not the environment (are there really any of those, leftys who care about the environment and their money but not other people’s money, …..
What ever happened to rational self interest which includes the environment self is in, resources self has available…..
Some time in the past I recall hearing that a dishwasher was the one appliance that was actually more energy efficient than most people. The reason being that most people use far more heated water to wash and rinse dishes by hand than most modern dishwashers use. I have not tried to look into this recently, so my information may be incorrect. It did come from a mentor of mine when I worked at Whirlpool - in the dishwasher group - as a summer intern long ago. So take it with a grain of salt.
In our household, the clothes dryer consumes far more than 3% of total energy usage when I allow it to be run. In warmer months (>60) I insist clothes be dried outside. My one concession is to allow them to be “fluffed” on low heat for 10 minutes. In winter months the exhaust gets redirected into the home and is filtered a second time through old nylons. At least the waste heat does not get sent outside to melt our local glaciers, and the humidity certainly helps improve the interior comfort.
Yeah, we have A/C, but I never use it. I find that closing windows during the day - and blinds on the sunny side - basically does the trick.
I’d save a lot more money if AGW would kick in and warm the winters enough to reduce my oil heating bill. A side benefit, if you will, is that reducing my use of heating oil would reduce my carbon footprint. In this case, AGW would be causing a reduction in CO2. Alas, the last three winters have been increasingly brutal, and I have resorted to cutting down trees on my property to feed my wood stove as auxiliary heat. Not kidding.
It is well known, that an efficient dish-washer saves energy and water compared to hand washing. There is a study by the University of Bonn, which I could not find immediately, but which is cited here for example (in german):
http://www.forum-waschen.de/doc/files/15757/SOEFW_2006_3DatenGeschirrspuelen.pdf
Hand-washing of dishes consumes 50% more energy and 6 times as much water than the dish-washer needs. (Additionally, the study found, that Germans wash dishes with less consumption of resources than participants of this investigation from other countries. This means, if Americans chose to wash there dishes by hand, they are likely to waste even more energy and water.)
[Reply: I would disagree that it is well known. And I will continue to be skeptical until offered some proof (in a language I can read).]
In warmer sunnier climates, these exterior solar screens are great. We bought the screening material, made some for our windows and used them when we lived in Richland, Washington. You could feel the reduced sun gain when you put them up. (We took them off in winter.)
You can also install them on the interior or the glass, but exterior installations work even better.
Clothes dryers are not designed to waste energy, any more than kettles, refrigerators or light bulbs are. Our clothes dryer sees very little use, except in the winter months when we’ve exhausted our under-cover hanging space. When we do need to use it, removing the moisture from our clothes so that they don’t go mouldy is a pretty good use of energy in my book.
Likewise with the dishwasher. I’m skeptical that modern dishwashers are more energy efficient than hand washing when you take into account production and maintenance costs for the machine. But even so, my time is limited, and I’m looking forward to buying a dishwasher so that I can spend less time doing housework and more with my family.
Dishwasher study (English)
http://www.landtechnik.uni-bonn.de/ifl_research/ht_1/EEDAL_03_ManualDishwashing.pdf
Unsurprisingly, there’s a big distribution of results when doing dishes by hand. See table 2 for the key results. but read the text for the caveats, and the conclusions is nto as simple as “dishwashers win”.
On the other side, is a less extensive study at a useful website, http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/ask-pablo/ is:
http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/askpablo-the-dishwasher-002386.php
Another good way to get more energy is to drill oil wells in ANWAR.
People will naturally figure out what the best way would be to save energy if energy was expensive to them. I’m not entirely comfortable with suggestions that involve cutting down the use of modern appliances that makes life easier, instead of just using them much smarter.
For example, we’re incredibly fond of both a dish washer and a dryer, but find them to use little energy in the way we use them. Dish washers, for example, is a great, sealed place to store the dirty dishes only to be washed once the dish washer is full. Otherwise you would be using hot water from the boiler much more regularly for hand washing to avoid having a pile of smelly and undesirable dirty dishes around. Hand washing is also enormously inefficient if the sink is far away from the boiler. The best is to have the two fitted close to each other, or a small, modern well insulated boiler close to the kitchen sink.
An electric oven uses incredible amounts of electricity. If you use the oven a few times a week you can easily pass the electricity use of a dryer. If you make clever use of gas and a microwave oven, you can easily make up the energy consumption of using a dryer, which is an essential piece of equipment in many parts of Europe where hanging outside to dry is impossible for most parts of the year. Make sure you have a clothes washer with a very fast spinning cycle, and use your dryer appropriately in order to minimize ironing.
With water heating, you can shave off extra electricity usage by setting it to a lower temperature in summer. Then the amount of energy required to warm it up from the ambient temperature to the temperature you require is significantly less in summer. In winter you normally set it higher to compensate for much more rapid heat loss while you’re using hot water, which is because of the colder plumbing and air it exits into and because of the colder temperature from the cold water it mixes with to make a bath of a desirable depth or shower of a desirable strength.
Also, putting timers on a water heater makes very little sense with modern boilers, unless your electricity prices are cheaper during certain hours, otherwise the gains are minimal.
General heating and air conditioning can squander a lot, if not most, of your household electricity. I’m with Atmoz on the efficient use of windows and shading. Also having your house set up properly, with insulation and shading mechanisms can make a huge difference. Even if you’re the ultimate lazy person, having electric motors move the appropriate shades, curtains and shutters around for you is going to use significantly less energy than a climate control system would to compensate. Double glazing isn’t just something people have in cold countries, it makes a tremendous difference with air conditioner usage and as a added bonus it keeps noise out.
Most importantly don’t just do something because it feels like it is saving or believe that doing some things by hand saves that much electricity. Measure, measure, calculate and compare. People are only forced to do this when electricity is expensive to them, otherwise it’s usually just gestures with stuff that saves milliwatts like mobile phone chargers.
This is one of my pet peeves, people have no sense of scale when it comes to gestures. For example letting a desktop PC shut itself down when not in use overnight saves as much energy in a single night as a room full of plugged in mobile phone chargers for a month. Also, a dripping tap usually wastes less water per year in money terms than it would cost to get a plumber out to fix it. Learn to fix it yourself or wait until you have two dripping taps. Driving twice as much with one car instead of having two cars is not going to save the earth. Recycling metals makes sense, the rest a lot less or none at all or actually harms the environment. Plastic bags are popular since they make up 0.01% of the mass and volume of the rest of the rubbish surrounding your groceries.